9 just-plain-cool developments on the road to smarter energy

9 just-plain-cool developments on the road to smarter energy

They're working on a spray-on battery at a university in Texas that could forever change the way we think of energy storage. In Menlo Park, CA a startup has just unveiled a robot that adjusts the angle of PV panels down on the solar farm. And did you hear about the company that's recycling rare earth metals from old car batteries? Scroll down for our latest installment of SGN Discovery Showcase (and don't miss the video on page 2).

Expanding energy storage options with a paint-on battery - A team of materials scientists and chemists from Rice University and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium have come up with a lithium ion battery they can spray on to a variety of surfaces. Scientific American reports that to test their battery design, "they applied the battery paints onto ceramic bathroom tiles, glass, a flexible transparency film, stainless steel and the side of a beer stein. In each case, the battery worked. In one experiment, they hooked a solar cell to one of the batteries and powered an LED display." Learn more >>

Solar cells make efficiency inroads - IBM scientists report they're making progress on a solar technology that shows "the highest efficiency to date for solar cells made from a combination of copper, zinc, tin, and selenium (CZTS)," according to an article in the MIT Technology Review. A paper by IBM photovoltaic scientists Teodor Todorov and David Mitzi detailing the work suggests the CZTS solar cells could reach high enough efficiencies to make them commercially viable. Learn more >>

Harvesting solar power from space - Pulling sunlight from the atmosphere down to earth has occupied bright minds for some time now. And according to a Fast Company article, it may be a few more decades before someone aces the technology for a space solar power array. However, the magazine reports some progress earlier this year when aerospace engineers at Strathclyde University, working with colleagues in Europe, Japan and the U.S. ejected spinning devices from a rocket -- a precursor to stabilizing massive satellites in the micro-gravity of the earth's orbit. Learn more >>

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